The Parisian DIYbio space that upcycles old lab equipment

This article was taken from the July 2014 issue
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The well-to-do residents of Paris's deuxième arrondissement have
a new hobby: "It's called 'biochiner' -- chiner in French
means antiquing," says Thomas Landrain. "It's going into the street
and finding old biology lab equipment." Landrain has spent the last
two years flea-shopping for centrifuges and PCR cyclers to assemble
a new "zero-euro laboratory" -- La Paillasse ("the bench"),
which opens this month. Open to all, the DIYbio lab will also be
home to more traditional makers. "So people can prototype objects
from classic materials such as wood, plastics and material, and
newer kinds of materials that we can produce locally."

Landrain, 29, started a weekly synthetic biology club in 2009.
"There was such freedom. There were engineers, mathematicians and
biologists and we were all working on bacteria." He decided to join
the then nascent biohacking movement, so he went to a hackerspace
called /tmp/lab to learn. "I arrived at this very strange place in
a Paris banlieue, which is in a squat. It's everything you
think of when you don't know anything about cyberspace -- you
arrive in a cave with computers everywhere." Landrain built the
first iteration of La Paillasse there, sourcing used equipment from
university labs.

It opened in March 2012, hosting projects including algae
bio-reactors and Landrain's own initiative, a pen loaded with
bacteria that produces its own ink. To build the next iteration in
the heart of Paris, Landrain created a wiki for genetic equipment,
which works as a toolkit for anyone trying to set up a lab. "At the
end you have a decentralised inventory for material." Enthusiasts
around France have already used the database to set up five other
DIYbio labs. Allez les biochineurs!